Among the many talented as well as minor writers who were inspired to compose for the marionettes, Chikamatsu ranks first, Takeda Izumo second, and Chikamatsu Hanji third, judging by the number of their plays that became the property of Kabuki and have withstood the shocks of time. The Genroku age, which produced Chikamatsu, Sakata Tojuro, and Ichikawa Danjuro the first; which saw the rising tide of talent in all directions and a deepening of the consciousness of the people, also witnessed an increased activity in the production of plays. And one characteristic of these pieces was that theatre managers were often responsible for plays, while many of the actors composed for themselves. Saruwaka Kansaburo, the founder of Yedo Kabuki, had been a playwright as well as the proprietor of his theatre, the Saruwaka-za, afterwards the Nakamura-za. Sadoshima Saburozaemon owned a theatre in Osaka, and also wrote his own plays. After Miyako Dennai in Yedo, there was Kawarasaki Gonnosuke, who wrote a play about the revenge of the Soga brothers that was a great success. The name Kawarasaki Gonnosuke has been intimately connected with the history of Yedo Kabuki, and was inherited by a modern actor. There was Nakamura Hichisaburo, the rival of the first Ichikawa Danjuro in Yedo, whose play, _Keisei Asamagatake_, or The-Lady-of-the-Gay-Quarters-Mount-Asama, brought him a wonderful success. Fukuoka Yagoshiro was an actor specialising in old men’s rôles in Kyoto. He recorded the opinions of the noted onnagata Yoshisawa Ayame, in his _Ayame Gusa_, or the Sayings of Ayame, concerning the secrets of onnagata acting, for which he is better known than for the plays he left to posterity. And there was Midzushima Shirobei, who was a tatayaku, or chief actor, as well as a sakusha. He was a patron of Yoshizawa Ayame. Miyasaki Denkichi, who played with Ichikawa Danjuro, the first, and who was implicated in a Yedo nunnery scandal with another leading actor, Yamashita Kozaemon, also wrote his own plays and was often assisted by his son, Sakakuyama Kanpachi, who was a sakusha. But of all these actor-playwrights, by far the most interesting and significant was Ichikawa Danjuro, the first. The eighteen hereditary pieces of the Ichikawa family to-day are the treasures of Kabuki, reflecting much of the vanished taste and style of these old days.